Notes on the Diplomatic History of the Jewish Question / With Texts of Protocols, Treaty Stipulations and Other Public Acts and Official Documents

by Lucien Wolf

For its part, the Government of the United States regards the conclusion of conventions of this character as of the highest value, because not only establishing and recognizing the right of the citizens of the foreign State to expatriate themselves voluntarily and acquire the citizenship of this country, but also because establishing beyond the pale of doubt the absolute equality of such naturalized persons with native citizens of the United States in all that concerns their relation to or intercourse with the country of their former allegiance.

The right of citizens of the United States to resort to and transact affairs of business or commerce in another country, without molestation or disfavor of any kind, is set forth in the general treaties of amity and commerce which the United States have concluded with foreign nations, thus declaring what this Government holds to be a necessary feature of the mutual intercourse of civilized nations and confirming the principles of equality, equity and comity which underlie their relations to one another. This right is not created by treaties; it is recognized by them as a necessity of national existence, and we apply the precept to other countries, whether it be conventionally declared or not, as fully as we expect its extension to us.

In some instances, other governments, taking a less broad view, regard the rights of intercourse of alien citizens as not extending to their former subjects who may have acquired another nationality. So far as this position is founded on national sovereignty and asserts a claim to the allegiance and service of the subject not to be extinguished save by the consent of the sovereign, it finds precedent and warrant which it is immaterial to the purpose of this instruction to discuss. Where such a claim exists, it becomes the province of a naturalization convention to adjust it on a ground of common advantage, substituting the general sanction of treaty for the individual permission of expatriation and recognizing the subject who may have changed allegiance as being on the same plane with the natural or native citizens of the other contracting State.

Some States, few in number, be it said, make distinction between different classes of citizens of the foreign State, denying to some the rights of innocent intercourse and commerce which by comity and natural right are accorded to the stranger, and doing this without regard to the origin of the persons adversely affected. One country in particular, although maintaining with the United States a treaty which unqualifiedly guarantees to citizens of this country the rights of visit, sojourn and commerce of the Empire, yet assumes to prohibit those rights to Hebrew citizens of the United States, whether native or naturalized.[45] This Government can lose no opportunity to controvert such a distinction, wherever it may appear. It cannot admit such discrimination among its own citizens, and can never assent that a foreign State, of its own volition, can apply a religious test to debar any American citizen from the favor due to all.

There is no treaty of amity and commerce between the United States and Roumania, but this Government is pleased to believe that Roumania follows the precepts of comity in this regard as completely and unreservedly as we ourselves do, and that the American in Roumania is as welcome and as free in matters of sojourn and commerce and legal resorts as the Roumanian is in the United States. We hear no suggestion that any differential treatment of our citizens is there imposed. No religious test is known to bar any American from resorting to Roumania for business or pleasure. No attempt has been made to set up any such test in the United States whereby any American citizen might be denied recourse to the representatives of Roumania in order to authenticate documents necessary to the establishment of his legal rights or the furtherance of his personal interests in Roumania. And in welcoming negotiations for a convention of naturalization Roumania gives proof of her desire to confirm all American citizens in their inherently just rights.

Another consideration, of cognate character, presents itself. In the absence of a naturalization convention, some few States hold self-expatriation without the previous consent of the sovereign to be punishable, or to entail consequences indistinguishable from banishment. Turkey, for instance, only tacitly assents to the expatriation of Ottoman subjects, so long as they remain outside Turkish jurisdiction. Should they return thereto their acquired alienship is ignored. Should they seek to cure the matter by asking permission to be naturalized abroad, consent is coupled with the condition of non-return to Turkey. It is the object of a naturalization convention to remedy this feature by placing the naturalized alien on a parity with the natural-born citizen and according him due recognition as such. This consideration gives us added satisfaction that negotiations on the subject have been auspiciously inaugurated with Roumania. If I have mentioned this aspect of the matter, it is in order that the two Governments may be in accord as to the bases of their agreement in this regard; for it is indispensable that the essential purpose of the proposed convention should not be impaired or perverted by any coupled condition of banishment imposed independently by the act of either contracting party.

The United States welcomes now, as it has welcomed from the foundation of its government, the voluntary immigration of all aliens coming hither under conditions fitting them to become merged in the body-politic of this land. Our laws provide the means for them to become incorporated indistinguishably in the mass of citizens, and prescribe their absolute equality with the native born, guaranteeing to them equal civil rights at home and equal protection abroad. The conditions are few, looking to their coming as free agents, so circumstanced physically and morally as to supply the healthful and intelligent material of free citizenhood. The pauper, the criminal, the contagiously or incurably diseased, are excluded from the benefits of immigration only when they are likely to become a source of danger or a burden upon the community. The voluntary character of their coming is essential,—hence we shut out all immigration assisted or constrained by foreign agencies. The purpose of our generous treatment of the alien immigrant is to benefit us and him alike,—not to afford to another State a field upon which to cast its own objectionable elements. A convention of naturalization may not be construed as an instrument to facilitate any such process. The alien, coming hither voluntarily and prepared to take upon himself the preparatory, and in due course the definite obligations of citizenship, retains thereafter, in domestic and international relations, the initial character of free agency, in the full enjoyment of which it is incumbent upon his adoptive State to protect him.

The foregoing considerations, whilst pertinent to the examination of the purpose and scope of a naturalization treaty, have a larger aim. It behoves the State to scrutinize most jealously the character of the immigration from a foreign land, and, if it be obnoxious to objection, to examine the causes which render it so. Should those causes originate in the act of another sovereign State, to the detriment of its neighbors, it is the prerogative of an injured State to point out the evil and to make remonstrance; for with nations, as with individuals, the social law holds good that the right of each is bounded by the right of the neighbor.

The condition of a large class of the inhabitants of Roumania has for many years been a source of grave concern to the United States. I refer to the Roumanian Jews, numbering some 400,000. Long ago, while the Danubian principalities labored under oppressive conditions which only war and a general action of the European Powers sufficed to end, the persecution of the indigenous Jews under Turkish rule called forth in 1872 the strong remonstrance of the United States. The Treaty of Berlin was hailed as a cure for the wrong, in view of the express provisions of its 44th article, prescribing that "in Roumania, the difference of religious creeds and confessions shall not be alleged against any person as a ground for exclusion or incapacity in matters relating to the enjoyment of civil and political rights, admissions to public employments, functions, and honors, or the exercise of the various professions and industries in any locality whatsoever," and stipulating freedom in the exercise of all forms of worship to Roumanian dependents and foreigners alike, as well as guaranteeing that all foreigners in Roumania shall be treated, without distinction of creed, on a footing of perfect equality.

With the lapse of time these just prescriptions have been rendered nugatory in great part, as regards the native Jews, by the legislation and municipal regulations of Roumania. Starting from the arbitrary and controvertible premises that the native Jews of Roumania domiciled there for centuries are "aliens not subject to foreign protection," the ability of the Jew to earn even the scanty means of existence that suffice for a frugal race has been constricted by degrees, until nearly every opportunity to win a livelihood is denied; and until the helpless poverty of the Jew has constrained an exodus of such proportions as to cause general concern.